In bottling plants the cases of empty bottles are positioned under gripper assemblies which then descend to engage and pick up the neck of each bottle in the case. The bottles are then lifted out of the case and moved horizontally to be lowered onto a conveyor feeding into a bottle washing machine. The bottles are not always precisely located within the case or the case itself may be slightly out of position. In either case the descending gripper assembly may be misaligned with one or more bottles in the case. If the misalignment is severe there should be some way to accommodate vertical movement of a gripper relative to the descending gripper assembly to thereby avoid breakage of the bottle. If the entry to the gripper assembly is slightly flared, the flare will accommodate some misalignment by way of forcing the bottle to move into alignment with the gripper. U.S. Pat. No. 2,695,190 shows a gripper assembly in which the stem supporting the gripper is a flexible hose which, of course, can bend and move sideways to accommodate greater misalignment than a rigid stem can tolerate. But that construction becomes unusable with the modern machines requiring more rapid cycling and, hence, rapid acceleration and deceleration during the horizontal movement. Thus the long flexible stems allowed swinging or pendulation of the bottles with consequent breakage. Furthermore, that construction did not permit any vertical movement and if the misalignment was beyond that which could be accommodated by the flexible stem, breakage could be the result.